Blackmagic supports Lee Joon-gi in Beijing

CHINA: Beijing-based Zhongshi Tiankuo Studio was recently tasked with switching the live camera feeds for the Beijing leg of Lee Joon-gi’s Asia tour, Together. A Blackmagic Atem 1 M/E Production Studio 4K switcher was specified for the camera switching with Oxygentec, the systems integrator that built the ATEM workflow for Zhongshi Tiankuo Studio, providing technical support throughout the concert.

The Atem handled switching of six HD-SDI camera feeds and provided multiview and PGM outputs via HDMI to two 24-inch LCD TVs for monitoring. The PGM from the switcher was also sent via SDI to another switcher, which was operated by a South Korean production team that managed the concert’s lights, sounds, animations and graphics.

‘We have put the Atem 1 M/E Production Studio 4K to the test on the production of 20 events in a month, including the fifth conference of Zhejiang Chamber of Commerce in Beijing where the Atem workflow worked without a glitch from 8am to 10pm,’ said Xueqing Wang, manager of Zhongshi Tiankuo Studio. ‘Its reliability and ability to resist interference was excellent, so we chose it for this Lee Joon-gi concert.’

Visual elements including animation and graphics from ProPresenter software running on two MacBook computers were output to the second switcher, where the South Korean production team combined the visual elements with the PGM from the Atem switcher and sent the composited image to multiple large LED screens at the concert.

‘We had an Atem 1 M/E Broadcast Panel but the space for us was too tight for us to use, so we used the Atem Software Control Panel on our MacBook computer instead,’ added Mr Wang. ‘The Atem Software Control Panel is intuitive, reliable and easy to use.’

The live production team also used a HyperDeck Studio Pro and a HyperDeck Shuttle SSD recorder to record the PGM from the switcher. ‘While an SDI PGM connection on the Atem switcher has been occupied by the connection to the second switcher, and the HDMI PGM port has been used for monitoring, the Atem 1 M/E Production Studio 4K offers many other ways to output the PGM video including other two separate PGM ports, a 4K down converted SDI PGM port and three customisable Aux ports. For the concert, we assigned the PGM video to an Aux port for the HyperDeck Shuttle to record.’

‘To output the signal being sent from ProPresenter on the MacBook computer to the Korean production team’s switcher with both DVI and SDI ports, they used a Thunderbolt to DVI adapter, but this wasn’t easy and took them almost two hours to make it work,’ recalled Rong Ding, support engineer at Oxygentec. ‘Blackmagic Design’s Thunderbolt powered UltraStudio Mini Monitor works with Mac computers and ProPresenter,’ explained Mr Ding. ‘All they need to do is connect their MacBook computer with the UltraStudio Mini Monitor via Thunderbolt and then output the signal from ProPresenter via SDI to the switcher. Much easier and much more reliable.’

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